Dave's Daily

Monday, September 27, 2004

Dog Days of Summer

Well, the Summer of 2004 is officially (as of the 22nd) and Fall has begun. We are having just unbelievable weather that really makes it hard to be inside.

We visited my mother-in-law this weekend. We had a nice visit, but our dog's days are almost over as well. We took our dog with us and let her run around in the backyard like we did last time. My mother-in-law has a black lab dog and they had fun just running around and play fighting all the time. But our stupid dog got out of the yard 3 times while we were there. Sunday morning was the worst as I was in the backyard watching the dogs play and our dog goes over to one corner of the yard, jumps up to the top of the fence and climbs over to get out. The fence isn't the normal height and is almost 6 feet high. By the time I got around to the front of the house, the dog was long gone. I finally spotted her and tried to coax her back, but to no avail. I chased her around the school that is across the street. I almost got her back once, as she came up on the porch of the house, but she took off again. She knows you're trying to grab her and she won't get too close to you. I finally got my mother-in-law's dog and we took off looking for her again. She finally followed us back to the house and with the lure of doggie treats, I finally caught her. I was steaming mad. She really needs a farm to run around on without having to be tied up or caged all the time. It's got to the point that I can't trust her to run around in the backyard anymore unleased as she can take off under or over the fence at any time.

On the way home, the kids were just at each other the whole way. My 2 year old daughter wouldn't ever take her nap and was just a mess. She was either singing (loudly), yelling, crying, saying "Stop It!" (which irriated our son to no end), or sticking her tongue out. I was ever so glad to get home. Our son wasn't much better as he just egged it on sometimes... I felt like just dropping them both off in some town along the way hoping that some nice family would take them in (well, not really... I would never do that, but the thought did cross my mind.... HA!)

Back to work today, but I really don't want to be here...

Blessings!

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Appraisal Woes & SW DVDs

Well, not much news to report, so that's why it's been awhile since my last post.

Finally got the appraisal done on our current house and the value was lower than expected. About $2000 less than what we have the contract even signed for. Ugh. And now the buyers' lender is saying that they don't even think the value they appraised it at will stand up upon review by the FMA (Federal Mortgage Association). So that means the value could even go lower... Ugh Ugh. If it does stand, since we're trying to help out the couple buying our house with closing costs, we'll have to eat a little more of the profit than what we were trying to get.

If the FMA does lower it even more, we'll have to make a decision to eat even more profit, or break off the contract I guess... Just praying it doesn't come to that.

Well, got my copy of the Original Star Wars trilogy DVD set on Tues (21st), the day it was released. I don't know if you can call it the 'original' trilogy anymore since Mr. Lucas has actually made modifications to the real 'original' versions, but I'm happy the films finally came out on DVD.

Blessings!

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Bored Meeting

Oh wait, that's suppose to be "Board" meeting. Yes, I had to go to my monthly church board meeting last night. The food is always good for the dinner, but going over church issues (mainly financal) are not much fun. We're trying to restructure the MAPS (where teams from the church go on missions construction trips) funding and one of the board members is in charge of the Missions minstry in the church. He has his idea of how it should be handled and other board members (and other church members) have their ideas. Sometimes they don't see eye to eye. Oh well, makes for an interesting evening. I did mention the food is always good didn't I? :-)

My wife is such a sweetie! She took our car in today to get the oil changed, inspected and tires rotated. I'm so glad she's willing to do that kind of stuff especially with having to drag a two year old along and keep her from destroying the waiting area at the shop! :-)

We're scheduled to get the appraisal done on our house tomorrow. Just praying it appraises out to what we're trying to sell it for!

Blessings!

Monday, September 13, 2004

The Weekend

For the most part, it was an uneventful weekend. On Saturday (11th), my wife and son went with the Jr. Bible Quiz team from our church for the first matches of the season. We took 3 teams. Each team played 6 matches. My son's team won 5 out of the 6 which is very good. He has really excelled this year as in previous years, he was a little shy in buzzing in and answering questions. This year, he actually "quizzed out" (answered 6 questions correctly) in two of the matches and almost in a third match (got 5 questions right). I am very proud of him for doing so well. My wife had to be a scorekeeper which stressed her out somewhat, be she did a good job too. :-) My daughter and I stayed home and we played with some of my son's action figures. We also went outside and played on the swing set and played with the dog. While my daughter took her afternoon nap, I popped in my Star Wars Ep. II DVD and skipped around to watch the best parts.

Sunday morning was the usual get up and rush rush rush around to get to church on time. Came home and had lunch and then our expected company got there a little after 2PM. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came down for a very quick visit so we could show them our new house. We went over to see it about 3:30PM and they were pretty impressed with it. Went back home for awhile, then we went out for dinner at Ruby Tuesdays.

Today, the girls were going out for breakfast and then our guests were headed back home. Overall we had a very nice visit.

I also sent off today a CD with some pictures of my wife's old hometown. She has an aunt that still lives there and the town will be celebrating it's 150th anniversary. This aunt wrote to me asking if I had any info/pictures about the businesses that her husband and my wife's father started up there in the town. They owned and operated several grocery stores and restaurants in town. The aunt hadn't really given me a due date for the stuff, but last week I got a little note from her stating that it was all due by Wed., Sept 15th. AHH! I quickly got the pictures and info I had and mailed it off today by priority overnight mail. Hopefully the CD will survive the mail system and get there all in one piece. There were also some pictures included from when a major motion picture was filmed in the town back in 1969 staring Michael Douglas and Lee Purcell.

Blessings!

Friday, September 10, 2004

House Inspection Repairs

Man... have we got a great realtor! Tues (Sept 7th) night, the inspectors came out to look at our current house. They found 5 main things that needed to be fixed (all pretty minor, really). Last night (Thurs), our realtor came over and helped fix all but one of them. We had to level the A/C condenser unit, put a plate over a electrical outlet in the garage, replace the caulking around the garage doors, and fix a door that didn't shut just quite right. One other item we couldn't do just yet was to replace a handle on one of the garage doors that had broken. I didn't even know it was broke as we always use the electric garage door openers. I really doubt that most realtors would help out in this way, so I feel really blessed to have such a great one!

My mother-in-law is coming down for a visit on Sunday (12th). One of my sister-in-law's is bringing her down as she wants to go see our new house. My wife is pretty excited for her to come down as she hasn't been down to visit us since my son was born (9 years ago).

Tomorrow is the first Junior Bible Quiz meet of the season. My wife and son will have to leave town at 5:45am to drive for two hours (in the church bus) to get to the meet. This is my son's fourth year to be involved. The first two years, I went along and participated as a Quizmaster. I kind of dropped out the third year and my wife went to the meets. This year my wife will be helping out as a Judge or Scorekeeper (which ever they need more for that particular meet). I know all the teams are excited and they usually have a really great time and do very well. Due to the distance, it makes for a very long day and they are pretty wiped out by the time they get home. I'll be staying home with our two year old daughter (and the dog!), so I'll be pretty tired too... HA!

Tomorrow is also the third anniversary of 9/11... I'll be flying my flag and saying a prayer for the families of the victims and for any future terrorist to reconsider his/her ways... I will not forget...

Blessings!

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

House Update

Wow... Guess I need to keep up with this thing... Haven't updated in awhile....

The inspector came out to do a whole house inspection on our current house last night. So we took the kids and dog to the park and then McDonald's for dinner. The inpsector found a few things for us to fix, but we'll wait until we get the final report to see exactly what he put on there.

I talked to our loan officer yesterday too about getting some of the bank fees removed for our closing costs for the new house. Along with the regular closing costs, there are three bank fees tacked on that our realtor said were mostly "fluff" fees and he said to ask if some of that could be removed, so I did. The loan officer agreed to remove $250 from the $750 total, which is better than nothing!! I can use that $250 to help pay for other fees we'll have! :-)

I mentioned last time that I was redoing one of my websites I do for a music group. I pretty much have it all converted except for a few of the larger pages. I found a program called Swishmax that easily lets me create Flash content. It's pretty cool and didn't take too much playing around to figure out the basics of the program.

Last Friday, Sept. 3rd, was my sister's 35th birthday. Happy Birthday Sis! She's also pregnant with her 7th child (okay, before you freak out... Her first three children were adopted...). They're hoping for a girl this time! :-)

This past Sunday, Sept 5th, our old church we attended where my wife and I got married, was having their annual Watermelon Bust. We try to go back every year to see all the old familar faces. Only this year, it seems like there are less old faces and lots of new faces. The kids had a lot of fun as they had bounce houses, volleyball, softball, etc., for me and my wife, it was somewhat of a let-down as we really felt distant from everyone. Guess we've been gone for too long. I doubt we go back next year.

Anyway, we're having some beautiful weather this week. Sunny, upper 70's/low 80's.... Soooo nice and hard to be inside.

Blessings!